


Tumblr Fic: Pacific Rim

by AlchemyAlice



Series: Fic Fragments of Doom [4]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:09:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7532209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlchemyAlice/pseuds/AlchemyAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic rescued from tumblr: PacRim edition!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for a prompt by mienuxblue

The thing that Raleigh sometimes forgets is that Chuck and Mako have known each other for a very long time. 

Arguably, too long.

He’s reminded during the press tour, when Chuck settles across from them at the breakfast table, in the latest in a string of middling hotels, and scowls into his coffee. This, in itself, is nothing unusual. 

What is unusual, is Mako’s eyebrows making their way up her forehead.

“Rough night?” she says eventually, digging into her eggs. Raleigh has an arm around her shoulders, mostly because she lets him, which Raleigh finds endlessly thrilling, even when it’s inconvenient, limb-wise. (They spent a lot of time velcro-ing after the breach, and now seem to have just gotten into the habit of closeness. They haven’t really talked about what’s going on with them otherwise, but Raleigh’s pretty sure they’re on the same page, and that page is: Mako is calling the shots, but those shots are guaranteed to make the both of them very happy, after all this political bullshit is over.

It is, in a word,  _fantastic._ Raleigh wants to marry the fuck out of her.)

Chuck looks at Mako, then at Raleigh, and then at Raleigh’s arm, and then back at Raleigh, possibly somewhere around his shoulder/chest region. “No,” he says finally, sullenly.

Mako tilts forward over her plate, listing slightly into Raleigh. “No?” she repeats, a little mocking. Raleigh glances at her. Her eyebrows are now hidden beneath her fringe.

Chuck glares at her. “Don’t start,” he says.

“Don’t start what?” Raleigh asks.

Mako makes a noise of innocence, but doesn’t break eye-contact with Chuck. Chuck’s glare is beginning to have a dagger quality. 

“Don’t,” he says. 

Mako blinks slowly. “I don’t know what you mean,” she says, and then turns back to her eggs. “He seemed nice,” she adds, between bites.

It’s only then that Raleigh notices the red mark peeking over the collar of Chuck’s shirt–round, punctuated by teethmarks, and perfectly situated over the long tendon of his throat. Raleigh tightens his arm just slightly around Mako’s shoulders, just for a moment. She hums, and leans closer into him. 

Chuck tenses. “You saw–”

“Blond,” Mako says blithely. “Tall. Polite. I liked him.” She lays her hand lightly on Raleigh’s thigh. Raleigh looks between her, and the tips of Chuck’s ears, which are turning red. Oh. 

_Oh._

Huh. 

“Whatever,” Chuck says, shoving the rest of his toast in his mouth and pushing back from the table. “See you in the interview.”

“See you,” Mako says, and sips her tea. 

Chuck hurries off. 

Raleigh watches him go speculatively. “So…”

“Fourth one on this tour,” Mako notes. “Chuck can be surprisingly charming, when he sets his mind to it. I can only conclude that he finally started taking notes from his father.”

“Too bad he doesn’t do so more often,” Raleigh agrees. He’s temporarily distracted by the even rub of Mako’s thumb on his leg. Then he prompts, “Fourth…?”

“Blond. Yes.” Finally, Mako cuts him a glance, full of generous laughter. “It’s not much of a change from before, really. Just real people instead of posters.”

“Posters?”

“Well, one in particular. I remember you looking very dashing in it, with your flight jacket all sharp and new.”

“Huh.” Raleigh looks back at the doorway from which Chuck had exited. 

“We should invite him for a drink after the interviews,” Mako suggests. “I should apologise for making fun of him. It’s hardly the first time–we’ve been teasing each other since I was a child. But still.”

“He must have been a brat,” Raleigh says. His fingers drum on the tabletop.

“He was.”

“He’s getting better though.”

“Mm,” Mako nods.

Raleigh eyes her, his hand stilling. “That drink,” he says finally. “I think you read my mind.”

“Nothing new, then,” Mako says, but she looks pleased. 

Raleigh steals a piece of toast from her, and she lets him. “I want to marry you,” he says, which is pretty much what he’s always thinking, but it seems worth repeating in this moment. 

“Chuck will be heartbroken,” Mako replies, patting his thigh.  

“We’ll make it up to him,” Raleigh promises.


	2. kaiju f'tagn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lovecraft fusion, UNFINISHED, mea culpa, etc.

No one wants to talk about it, but Raleigh knows that all the pilots are thinking it–the psychic bleed is getting worse.

Tendo purses his lips when he mentions it. “Sasha said something similar. Thought her arm was torn off for a second, but it was just a hallucination. Threw off Cherno’s swing–she wasn’t happy about that.”

“Any ideas on shielding?” Raleigh asks.

“The pilot chambers are already lined with lead and electronic reflectives against basic psychic attacks,” Tendo replies, working his hands together. It’s late, and they shouldn’t have any more coffee at this point; Raleigh can feel the simultaneous swoop and crash of his own caffeine high having been sustained too long. “It was no problem for the first few category levels.  And the citywide delusions are a thing of the past–people have built up a certain degree of resistance, at least on the coast, so as long as we keep the new Kaiju out at sea or at least partially submerged, there’s no chance of another Avacha Bay.”

Raleigh winced. Avacha Bay had been before his time, but he’d heard about it enough on the news. The small news stories that had preceded it, of flash mobs chanting nonsense and then forgetting it en masse, became far less funny when nearly 20,000 people from around the bay shouted that same nonsense, all while walking slowly into the water, and continuing to walk until they drowned.

Months later, linguists managed to guess at a translation of a small fragment, based on impressions some survivors managed to remember under hypnosis: _She is awake. It is time._

One month after that, the first Kaiju took San Francisco. It wasn’t just conspiracy theorists who made the connection.

“But now?” Tendo continues, “If it’s getting through your helmets and the pilot chambers themselves, I don’t know what more we can do. Not without adding to the jaegers’ weight, slowing them down more.”

Raleigh makes a noise in his throat, and looks away.

Tendo watches him. “What did you see?” he asks, a little tentatively.

__Mako in pieces,__ Raleigh thinks. __Non-Euclidean geometry. Abyssal darkness, taken physical form.__ “You don’t want to know,” he says aloud.

***

Another reason it was important to have two pilots instead of one? To protect each other’s sanity.

Raleigh didn’t give this much thought for a long while, as he and Yance had looked after each other in all ways since the beginning, but he thinks about it a lot now.

That freezing and torrential night in Alaska, he remembers getting one unshielded glimpse of Knifehead, both through his eyes and through his mind. For years afterwards, he’s almost certain that it was only Yancy’s shattering fear, whiting out his senses and then leaving him empty, that allowed him to stay sane through the encounter, and after.

Losing Yancy had been like cauterizing a wound, sealing his mind closed, one last act of protection by his big brother.

When he reached the shore, Gipsy limping and crying his loss along with him, he knew he’d never be a pilot again, because for all he knew, losing Yance had broken the precious mental bridge he had used for the drift.

But then six years pass, and Mako Mori meets his eyes on the landing pad of the Shatterdome, her gaze steady from beneath the broad span of her umbrella, and Raleigh finds himself reevaluating that position rather thoroughly.

***

The Drift, when they first try it together, is like walking out into warm rain, a soothing embrace right up until Raleigh unwillingly recalls a flash of Knifehead’s gaze and the moment of Yancy being ripped from him, and then Mako is diving straight down into the chasm of her own memory.

Together, they re-live a child’s brain left unshielded and vulnerable, unable to process the form that looms and roars above the skyline of Tokyo, a child running because it is better to do that than fall and be touched by its shifting monstrousness, crying because she can’t stop herself.

When Tendo cuts the power to Gipsy and Raleigh leaps out of his harness to catch her, he wonders how in hell she managed to survive for so long, having looked into a kaiju’s face and worse yet, had it look right back.

On the other hand, he’s pretty sure he understands why they’re drift-compatible now–telepathic scar tissue makes for one hell of a bridge.

***

There have been studies done, since the first touchdown in San Francisco, about whether sanity can be regained after full Exposure. The conclusions were mainly negative. Raleigh doesn’t feel like he’d do anything to disprove them.  

So when Pentecost grounds them, Raleigh grinds his teeth, and says “Yes, sir” when he’s told to, because there are afterimages still swimming in his eyes, and he doesn’t know when (or if) they’ll go away.

***

While everyone’s out watching Gipsy Danger’s test run, Newton drifts with a fragment of Kaiju brain, and then tries for three hours after that to disembowel himself with his own fingernails. It takes Hermann four hours to get him back to speaking English, at which point he has managed also to scratch out on a spare corner of chalkboard the words Newt had muttered before his mind returned from where it had gone. There was a great deal of it, some of it familiar and some not, but one new phrase came up a great deal:

__Ilyaa ‘fhalma, ngilyaa shugg n'ghayar._ _

A _wait the mother, and await the moment of the death of earth._

“It’s m-more than that,” Newt says eventually, hands trembling and blood still dripping steadily from his nose to his shirt collar. Pentecost sits across from him, and doesn’t bother to offer him a handkerchief. “There’s a reason why they’re getting worse. It’s be-because they’re getting older. They’re, they’re ancient. At least, the ones back home are. The little ones, the Ones and Twos, those are babies, man, great-great-great-great grandchildren, but the old ones, the old ones are the ones to fear.”

“Let me guess,” Pentecost says, his face not betraying a single thing. “Their mama’s coming soon.”

“Yeah,” Newt says, and tries to take a drink of water. It mostly sloshes down his front. “And uh. I barely caught even a, an impression of her. But I’m pretty sure that, if we ever look at her directly? We’re dead.”

“She’ll destroy us.”

“Well yeah, but I mean.” Newt raps his knuckles against his temple. “This is what’ll go first. I saw things–I can’t even describe them. I think if I tried, I’d go blind or something.”

“Medusa,” Hermann says quietly, with a slight hiss.

“Turning us all into gibbering fools instead of stone.”

“I think I’d prefer stone,” Stacker remarks, and strides from the room. “I’m gonna need you to do it again!” he calls over his shoulder.

“I figured,” Newt breathes. He looks only half pleased.

Hermann scowls, and sets about translating the rest of what the Kaiju had spoken from out of Newton’s throat.

From its tank across the room, the Kaiju brain fragment shifts its tendrils restlessly, and seems almost to whisper through the glass.

***

Raleigh feels the attack coming even before the alarm goes off, like the beginning of a tension headache, coupled with a burning sourness at the back of his throat. He goes and knocks on Mako’s door, and she answers almost immediately, one foot already shoved into her boot.

“The Marshall’s not going to send us out,” Raleigh says.

“We will be ready anyway,” she replies. She touches her temple lightly after tying her bootlaces. “Feels strong,” she murmurs.

Raleigh nods. He can feel the insidious panic growing under his breastbone, a terror at once familiar and not his own. It was getting more and more like having old wounds in bad weather–all the pilots could feel it in their bones, could feel a Kaiju coming by the cracks in their sanity. As for Mako, she might be a rookie, but Raleigh knows intimately how the Kaiju have left their imprint on her mind and her life.

“Least the control room’s shielded,” he says. She makes a noise of assent.

The alarm goes off, finally, and they run to the bridge.

It’s a double event.

And for three hours, the world goes slightly mad. In more ways than one.

People are screaming outside the Shatterdome, a high whine of psychic distress like a rabbit cornered by a wolf. Most shelters afford physical protection, but mental is more difficult– lead-lining only goes so far.

Crimson Typhoon breaks apart in pieces, because there are tentacles in the water, slick and razor sharp, and pulling with inexorable force, and the water itself seems to roar as steel crumbles and tears.

Cherno Alpha runs in, and doesn’t return. Striker Eureka steps in.

That’s when the fear really starts.

“Sir?” Tendo says, and there’s a waver in his voice. “Striker’s neural connection. Something’s happening to it.”

“They’re out of alignment?” Stacker asks.

“No, they’re calibrated perfectly, but these readings aren’t normal, both their limbic systems are overloading with stimuli, stress levels impressing on the hypothalamus are off the charts–”

Chuck’s voice crackles through the comm line, but it’s barely recognisable. He sounds like he’s ten years old, voice small and high, barely more than a sob.

“…Dad?!”

“They’ve got to him,” Raleigh says darkly.

“Striker’s gonna short out if the Hansens keep overloading it with adrenaline,” Tendo says tightly. “We need to extract them or shut them down before they hurt themselves.”

“The Kaiju are making their way to shore, sir!” one of the technicians called from across the room.

“Sir,” Raleigh says at Pentecost’s shoulder. “Let Gipsy go and help them.”

“You could barely handle each other’s baggage in a test drift,” Stacker retorts, “How the hell do you think you’ll manage against the psychic frequency these two are putting out?”

Raleigh casts a look at Mako, and she looks steadily back at him, as solid as stone.

“We can handle it, sir,” he says, “I promise you.”

“Sir, fight or flight impulse is at critical,” Tendo says. “We need to make the call.”

Stacker looks darkly at Mako and Raleigh. “Suit up,” he says through gritted teeth.

***

They scrape a win amidst the losses. Barely.

They don’t say it, but Mako and Raleigh know exactly why. (It wasn’t just Gipsy’s sword.)

After the adrenaline rush of Leatherback, and the cheers that greet them, and the sobering words delivered by Stacker, Mako presses a hand against Raleigh’s side and says, “We should talk. About–”

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s not ashamed to sag a little against her. He figures they could both use the physical contact this time. He’s still tasting copper in the back of his throat, and his head aches like he’s living through a lobotomy.

They go to her room, because it’s neater, and also there are blankets–soft ones, not military issue, clearly from a young girl’s bedroom, and worn into pliancy. They burrow beneath them, the bunk creaking, and Raleigh puts his head on Mako’s chest, listening to the fast tempo her heart drums out, his own matching it against her stomach. It feels like he’s shaking out of his skin, and he knows she’s the same because her grip on the back of his neck and around his shoulders is bruising to hide the tremors.

“It’s going to be worse in the breach,” he murmurs.

“But now we know,” Mako answers.

“Yeah. We can do this.”

Between them, the Drift echoes, resonating and strengthening, a shield of scar tissue pulled tight across the distance that separated them, and Raleigh thinks that they’ll probably be driven insane tomorrow, but at least they won’t be alone.

Mako doesn’t say anything, but her agreement comes through loud and clear.

***

The next morning in the mess hall, Herc sits with them. He’s quiet, his eyes hollow.

“Where’s Chuck?” Mako asks, voice soft.

Herc still flinches like she shouted. “Until about two hours ago? Still screaming.”

Raleigh pushes away his tray, no longer hungry. “The Marshal gonna let you both ride?”

Herc meets his gaze. “No,” he says, “I imagine not. One of us, maybe. But together, both of us in the drift? It’s not safe anymore.”

Raleigh hears what he doesn’t say: __Both of our memories are twisted up now, tainted.__

Sometimes Raleigh wonders whether it would have been safer for the jaeger program not to have defaulted to family members, where life experiences could strengthen the drift, but also build a firmer ground upon which the fear could take hold.

“Will Chuck be ready in time?” Mako asks.

“I think so,” Herc answers, “Not through any help from me, though.”

In the end, Chuck goes, Stacker alongside him. He looks at Mako and Raleigh, and says through a torn-up throat, “Don’t fuck it up.”

“We won’t,” Mako says, because Chuck will accept it more readily from her, and they all know it.

Stacker speaks to her off to the side for a long moment, and Raleigh doesn’t try to listen–it isn’t for him to hear, and he’ll know in the drift. He can make a guess, too–because Pentecost has looked into the face of a kaiju too, been laid bare as his co-pilot succumbed, and it’s easy to imagine that whatever is waiting for them in the Breach will find that scar and tear it wide open the moment it gets the chance.

It’ll be Mako and Raleigh holding that moment back, keeping it from coming too soon.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ALL THE CROSSOVERS, for strix-alba's prompt: "if you could write either Ichabod, Raleigh, and Sherlock having a squee session about their awesome WOC partners-against-crime, or Mako, Abby, and Joan hanging out being competent without their golden-retriever-puppy companions, that would be delightful :D"

Joan has very few vices, made fewer by her consideration for the various recovering addicts she had been companion to over the years, but when presented with the cancelling of the apocalypse followed by Sherlock  _still_ getting into something unfeasibly ridiculous, she was more than willing to seek out the medicinal properties of the nearest bar. 

It rather helped that she’d gained some sisters-in-arms on that front as well. 

“Perhaps you should start setting some boundaries,” Mako said. 

“Oh, I have set them,” Joan replied. “I have set them, put them in writing, posted them up around the apartment. I am at the point of demanding his signature in blood.”

“Not recommended,” Abby said into her drink. She looked up at Mako and Joan. “Long story. But in short, that shit is potent and you don’t want it lying around.”

“How do you not have this problem with Raleigh?” Joan demands. “He’s been inside your head, literally.”

Mako shrugs, but she’s clearly pleased. “He’s very respectful. Or at least, he has learned to be. And the drift is mutual. It’s difficult to struggle with these things when our boundaries are made clear by our brains, even if not by our words.”

“I highly recommend child locks,” Abby says. “But Sherlock’s probably good at cracking those.”

“Most locks are in his wheelhouse, yes,” Joan sighs. 

It is at this point, that Ichabod Crane and Sherlock Holmes both burst into the bar. “Watson!” Sherlock intones. “We have encountered one of the few things that cannot be solved by giant robots in this brave new world–no offense meant, Miss Mori.”

Mako nodded, looking amused. Joan raised an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”

“Let me guess,” Abby starts.

“Murder!” Ichabod and Sherlock both proclaim.


	4. to the future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for caedesdeo's prompt: "post-PacRim, Mako/Chuck/Raleigh, Raleigh the crazy cat dude, Mako the maker of swarms of baby robots & Chuck who is only dealing with these things because they’re (offscreen) that damn good in bed/FINE HE LOVES THEM OK GDI"

Raleigh expects Mako to put her seemingly infinite well of knowledge and talent to good use after they close the breach, but he isn’t quite expecting this. 

“Demo, stop, cease, desist. Futura, come here girl." 

Futura, the indolent ball of fluff that had somehow made its way from Hong Kong’s alleyways into the Shatterdome and specifically into Raleigh and Mako’s bedroom, gives him a disinterested huff, and then saunters over to arrange herself artfully across his shoulders. Demo, by contrast, makes a jittering indignant sound, which seems to be just about the only sound it’s capable of making. It waves its pincers at him like some sort of suspicious crab. 

Raleigh looks at it evenly. "If you’re not going to stay out of my way while I’m doing paperwork, you’re not going to be allowed to hang out here.”

The tiny robot shuffles in place. 

Raleigh narrows his eyes. Then he smirks. “Go bother Chuck.”

Demo straightens, did a small salute, and with a squeak, launches itself off Raleigh’s desk to scuttle away and out the door. 

Futura yawns. Raleigh scratches her ears until she purrs, and then goes back to work. 

“Raleigh? Have you seen Demo?” Mako asks a few minutes later, knocking on the doorframe. Raleigh doesn’t know why she bothers anymore, seeing as they share the same bunk nowadays, but as with all things Mako does, he finds it strangely and undeniably appealing. 

“Sent him to Chuck,” he offers, and holds out his hand pleadingly to her. She smiles and obliges him, sliding into the circle of his arm and pressing a kiss to his temple. 

“You’re pulling his pigtails,” she scolds mildly. 

“Maybe just a little,” Raleigh admits. He looks up at her. “You think it’s working?”

“MAKO! WHY’S YOUR DAMN ROBOT GOT IT IN FOR ME? AH FUCK, IT’S ON MY LEG.”

Mako smirks. “Maybe a little.” She leans forward, stroking her hand across Futura’s head in appeasement before drawing it down Raleigh’s bicep. Raleigh doesn’t bother hiding his pleased shiver. “You know you could probably just throw him into our bed instead of sending my prototypes to catch him, don’t you?”

“We’ll get to that,” Raleigh grins. “All in good time.”

Futura purrs.


End file.
